This fitness blogger opens up about how bloating affects her body image

Despite what our Instagram feeds may tell us, no one wakes up feeling like a fitness model every single day. Since our bodies are constantly changing, this means that we all have days when we aren’t feeling our best, days when it’s tough for us to feel confident in our own skin. Even fitness blogger Tiffany Brien has experienced such days – especially when bloating gets involved.

To caption side-by-side photos featuring her bloated stomach beside her non-bloated stomach, Tiffany wrote, “No I’m not 6 months pregnant. It’s just my food baby…These two photos are 12 hours apart, left before bed and right when I woke up…. I know right!!” Brien added that she chose to share these photos because she wants her followers to realize that there’s no such thing as “perfect.” Bad days happen to the best of us, typically when we’re dealing with stress, hormones, a lack of sleep, and food intolerances.

“This photo is a bad day, a day I cannot tell you exactly what I ate that made me blow up. I have gone over everything I ate and I was relatively clean so it could be something I think is “healthy” that my body now thinks naaa no likey,” explained Tiffany. “Sometimes your body becomes intolerable to something you’ve always eaten, you just have to work it out. Fun game though? No. Not really.”

Brien mentioned that her stressful job has a huge impact on her body, so she needs time to de-stress and relax her insides after getting home from work. In addition to this, Tiffany also has trouble sleeping and keeping up with the 8 hours of sleep our bodies need to recharge. Then, there are her hormones, which have been out of whack because she used to put her body under physical stress for bikini competitions.

“I am in no way perfect. In fact I am miles away from being a role model when it comes to looking after myself fully in this sense. We all have our areas of weakness,” stated Tiffany. “I know what I am doing wrong and I know how to fix it but it is actually implementing it into your lifestyle that’s the tough bit. I am trying extremely hard to sleep more, relax more and eat right (not less, just right) and I am definitely seeing improvement.”

While bloating is difficult for Brien to deal with, that hasn’t stopped her from working to cope with this part of her life. In fact, she’s listed plenty of tips that have worked for her, on her Facebook page, for those who are dealing with similar issues: